After the death of Tito the Republic began to crumble due
to rising nationalism,
Indeed. Milosevic's exploitation of Serbian nationalism permitted other nationalist movements like the Croatian Utashas to gain ground over the Federalists. Croatian seem to believe, from my readings, that without Tito running interference for them the Serbs would try to dominate them politically.
and the encouragement of some European nations such as Italy and Germany which had many reasons for wanted to see Yugoslavia "Balkanized".
Could you elaborate on this point?? I don't know much about why these nations would want to "balkanize" Yugoslavia and create instability.
Milosevic made what I believe would be his big mistake. He
held a meeting of the cabinet and stated that since there
were practically no Serbs living in Slovania, they might
as well let it go.
Key point. If Milosevic was as interested in preserving the FRY for ALL ETHNICITIES, and not just the Serbs, this thing might have gone the other way. No Serbs in Slovenia meant that this was a civil war fought over ethnic issues, not constitutional ones.
However, Tudjman had his own ideas which was to bring back the "Ustaza Republica", a NAZI puppet nation from WWII that built the Jujenuk death camp that killed 350,000 Serbs, many Jews and Gypsies. That flag of Croatia? It might as well be the swastika of the Weirmacht
Here you are showing your bias. The Serbian Chetniks (Nationalists who still exist in Serbia) also took support from the Nazis after the British decided to divert aid to Tito's partisans (who were killing more Germans). The Croatians are Roman Catholic and naturally gravitated towards the Italians for religious, not political reasons.
The missing point here is that atrocities were committed on all sides during WWII. And the Italians and Germans had just as much trouble keeping the different factions from killing one another as they did fighting Tito and his communists.
Btw, some 30,000 Croatian POWs were captured by the Brits and Americans in the final stages of WWII. They requested political asylum rather than be shipped into Tito's hands. This request was refused and these POW's were shipped and summarily executed by Tito's communist regime.
Fact: The first acts of ethnic cleansing were conducted by
Croatians against Serbs in Croatia
Fact: Milosevic armed the Serb population in Croatia and was preparing his own attempt at stirring up a pretext that would permit Serbian troops to intervene. Croatia was not heavily armed at that time (the Serbs maintained control over the nation's heavy weapons, thus maintained the ability to intimidate the other republics).
Indeed ethnic cleansing did take place by Croatian forces. However, it is likely that Serbs living in Croatia would have initiated similar actions had they been permitted to.
The conflict was created by Milo stirring up nationalist fervor and fear mongering in Croatia in order to subvert and destabilize that republic. This only created more support for the Utashas.
The big difference between Milo and Lincoln is in the character of their personalities and convictions. Lincoln believed in a union for all cultures (though leery about granting the vote to blacks) and fought to preserve a union that would not be dominated by any one ethnicity. Milosevic cared only about getting as much for the Serbs as he could, not giving a flying hoot about the concept of a union were all people were offered equal representation and political say.
Regards,
Ron |
